Flood Rising

44

Jenna stood alone in the small galley, staring at the unopened bottle of water like she might gain some insight from the light refracting through it. Reality had become a very fluid substance in the last few hours. The revelations, each one more incredible than the last, had poured down on her, washing away the foundations of everything she believed about herself. She would have rejected every word, demanded to be given her life back, if not for the simple fact that, deep down, she knew it was all true.

Mercy came to join her a few seconds later. “You okay, honey?”

Jenna continued to stare at the bottle. “How did you…?” She didn’t know how to finish the question.

Mercy hugged her. Jenna did not resist, but neither did she return the embrace.

“I was the first,” Mercy began. “I suppose that’s obvious to you now. Back in ‘78, gene splicing was a completely new field. The Human Genome Project wouldn’t be started for several more years, but biologists had already started mapping DNA. Soter’s team was able to identify several of the gene sequences in the message and recognized that it was human DNA. They found human donors who were a close match and cultivated several in vitro embryos. A ready supply of genetic material. Of those, I was the closest match. In the years that followed, as gene science improved and computers got faster, they were able to fine-tune the process. Meanwhile, I grew up. I had a pretty normal childhood, I guess. It seemed normal anyway.

“We had a private compound in Arecibo on the other side of the island from the lab. I lived there, and when I was old enough, I taught the younger ones. They sent them over from the lab when they were old enough. Even though we weren’t like other people, Dr. Soter and the team thought it was best to have us live normal lives — education, careers, families — but I stayed there until…”

She gave a shrug. “Dr. Soter was with me, on the far side of the island, when the lab was destroyed. It looked like a natural disaster, but he knew better. We were a secret project—‘deep black,’ they call it. Someone in the government found out about us — someone who wasn’t supposed to know — and decided it was better to make us disappear. Dr. Soter knew they would be looking for us, so we scattered. Later on, when we realized that you had survived, we decided I should stay close to you, keep you safe if anyone ever figured out who and what you were, and when you were old enough, tell you the truth.”

Jenna listened without interrupting, but when Mercy fell silent, she said, “That’s not what I meant. I was wondering how you got on that helicopter. If you were in contact with Soter all along, then you must have known what was happening.”

“It was too dangerous to stay in contact with him. When you told me that someone had tried to kill you, I knew, but there was no way to make contact. When the helicopter showed up at the safe house looking for you, Dr. Soter recognized me. That was the first time we’d spoken in ten years.”

“But you must have known what was going on. You just let me stumble around on my own. You could have told me everything back home, before I went on that wild goose chase in the Everglades.”

Mercy frowned. “Jenna, it’s difficult to explain. There’s still a lot you don’t know. And if I had told you all of this, would you have believed me?”

Jenna didn’t allow herself to speculate on what her reaction might have been. Even now, after everything she had experienced, everything she had done, it was a lot to swallow. Yet, as crazy as it sounded, it also felt like the truth. “Did you always know that it was Noah who destroyed the lab and took me?”

Mercy nodded sadly.

“And yet you…you were with him?”

“Noah was a good man, Jenna. I believe he deeply regretted what happened that night. That’s why he saved you. And why I always trusted him.”

Jenna wondered whether Mercy knew that it was Cray and his partner who had killed Noah, but there was something else that she was even more curious about. “Did he know who you really were?”

“I think he must have wondered about our resemblance. He may have suspected that we were related, but I don’t think he knew the particulars about what was going on at the lab. If he had…well, I don’t know if he would have been so quick to save you that night. A lot of people would call us ‘abominations.’”

Jenna sighed. “What are we, Mercy? Cort told me that the…the clones…are doing terrible things, trying to start a world war. Is this all part of Soter’s plan?”

“It most certainly is not,” a voice intoned from behind Mercy. Dr. Soter stood in the aisle, leaning heavily on his cane. “And I would caution you against believing anything that man told you. The government needs a scapegoat, someone to blame for their own ineptitude. They have chosen you and your brothers and sisters.”

The response rang hollow. If the government needed someone to blame, there were much easier targets than a group of alleged clones cooked up from a recipe beamed in from another galaxy. Nevertheless, Jenna could tell from Soter’s expression — his body language and his eye movements — that he believed it to be true. Mad scientist or not, he wasn’t lying to her about any of it.

“If you were working with the government, why did they turn on you?”

Soter smiled patiently. “Politics. The project was begun under the auspices of the Office of National Estimates, which was a division of the Central Intelligence Agency. Our funding was deeply buried in the black budget, and as the years passed, few within the agency, and no one in the administration, knew what we were doing. I can only surmise that someone learned about our research and found it politically expedient to erase all traces of the program.”

“Do you still have contacts in the government? People who could protect us and set the record straight?”

“Yes…and no. We had to be discreet. Our genetic research has been at a virtual standstill, but we have done our best to monitor the progress of the children in hopes that there would be a breakthrough. Just the opposite has happened, and now the government means to finish what they started fifteen years ago. My contacts cannot risk taking direct action.”

“But something is happening. Someone intentionally released the SARS virus in China. And I think Cort was telling the truth about the cyber-attack.” She thought back to what else she had been told. “He showed me pictures of two people — Kelli Foster and Jarrod Chu. Are they…?”

Soter’s expression was that of a parent refusing to believe reports of his child’s delinquency, but his answer was reserved. “Kelli and Jarrod were from Generation Six, cultivated in 1984. By that time, we had refined our approach. They were an almost perfect match to the genome code we received in the transmission, particularly Kelli, since the original message was coded for XX chromosomes.”

“Cort said they have disappeared.”

Soter drew in a breath. “You have to understand, Jenna. The children aren’t my agents. It was always my intention that their lives be as normal as possible. After the attack, we had cut all lines of communication, and when the children still in my care reached maturity, they were mainstreamed in secret. Kelli and Jarrod were two such. They pursued their personal goals and interests, and that led to important positions in civil service. For their safety and my own, I have kept a distance.”

Jenna saw his eyes flicker ever so slightly to the side. Now he was lying, though she didn’t need to be a human lie detector to catch it. “You’ve been keeping tabs on everyone, even me.”

Before he could protest, she continued. “Your men — Cray and the other guy — were there just minutes after someone tried to kill me. You knew the hit was coming down, and you sent them to rescue me. Did you also tell them to kill Noah? Payback for what happened at the lab?”

Mercy gasped in surprise at this news, but Soter just sagged, defeated. “I knew. I was alerted to the government’s intention to hunt down and kill my children. I warned those that I could, but the only way to protect you was direct intervention. I am sorry that your…that Mr. Flood was caught in the crossfire, so to speak. I bore him no ill will.”

Soter was either telling the truth or learning how to control his response better. Jenna chose to believe the former. Nevertheless, there were a lot of gaps in his story. If the destruction of the lab had driven him and the others underground, then how was it that he had a veritable army at his disposal — manpower, firepower, helicopters and executive jets? Someone was funding him, and she saw no evidence that it was not a foreign government as Cort had claimed.

“So what happens next?” Jenna asked. “Where are we going?”

“Back where it all began, my dear. There is still much that you need to be told. And I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I would prefer to explain it when we reach our destination.”

Jenna shook her head. “If you want my help, start talking now.”

The old man sighed again, this time in surrender. “Thirty-seven years ago, an extraterrestrial intelligence reached out to us. They sent us a message, and even though I succeeded in unlocking that message, I still do not understand what it means.

“They sent us instructions, in the form of a complete DNA sequence. A human genome, but with some very slight differences. You are more intelligent, faster and stronger than an ordinary human. You may also have other abilities of which you may not be aware, or which might not yet have become manifest. But these traits are the means, not the end itself.”

Jenna thought she understood what he was driving at. “You think the ETs told you how to make us smarter so that we would be able to figure out how to talk to them?”

“Perhaps. But there is another possibility. Are you familiar with genetic memory?”

Jenna knew the term from her psychology classes, but sensing that Soter meant it as a rhetorical question, she shook her head.

“For years, biologists have believed that humans acquire nearly all of our memories from interacting with the environment, but recent research is showing that some elements of memory — acquired phobias, for example — may be genetically transmitted from one generation to the next. This has been posited by many as an explanation for past-life regressions.

“Memories, you see, are nothing but sequences of proteins stored in our brain, and accessed by pathways of neurons. There’s no reason that the formation of memories cannot be coded in the DNA, especially when you consider that 98 % of the human genome is non-coded, sometimes erroneously called ‘junk’ DNA.

“We don’t know what purpose non-coded DNA serves, but the intelligence responsible for sending us the message most certainly does. And I believe that every single nucleotide is important.”

Jenna nodded slowly. “You think the message is coded into my DNA.”

“Jenna,” Soter spoke in a solemn, almost reverent voice. “You are the message.”

45

The light rain that greeted Jenna as she stepped onto the tarmac intensified to a downpour, as the car in which she rode, along with Mercy, Dr. Soter and the two faux feds, made the half-hour trip into the rugged interior of the island territory of Puerto Rico. She had learned that Cray’s partner was named Markley, but she had learned little more about herself. The terrain was like nothing she had ever imagined. They were surrounded by undulating domes and valleys, lushly carpeted with verdant foliage, looking somehow greener beneath the gray sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Jenna turned and saw Mercy watching her. She nodded. “I’m used to flat islands and open water. Until last night, I’d never even left the Keys. I had no idea…”

She stopped, realizing the absurdity of the statement. This wasn’t a field trip. It was a homecoming. She had been born — if that was the word for it — and lived the first few months of her life somewhere on this very island. “Where was the lab?”

Soter fielded the question with a grave expression. “On the south coast, near Ponce. We stayed here to be close to the observatory. At the time, we had no idea where our research would take us, but we felt certain we would be…communicating…with someone. Even though our project shifted to a new discipline — genetic research — we stayed, because we knew that eventually, we would need to use the radio telescope.” He reached out a laid a hand on Jenna’s forearm. “And that day has finally come.”

The overt familiarity made Jenna uncomfortable, but she kept her reaction neutral. It was too soon to let her guard down, too soon to blindly trust Soter. His words belied the display of affection, a none-too subtle reminder that to him, she was a science experiment, not a daughter. And even if that wasn’t the case, she was nowhere near ready to embrace him as a father.

Father. That was the worst aspect of this latest revelation. She had been so quick to demonize Noah for taking her away, depriving her of parents and a normal childhood. Now, the imagined crime was meaningless. She had no parents and her childhood would have been anything but normal. Noah, in taking her away from all of that, had given her normalcy. A life. That made him the closest thing she would ever have to a father.

But all that was behind her now. Father, home, childhood…normal…all of it was gone.

She blinked away tears — self-pity was a pointless indulgence — and turned her attention back to the passing landscape. The route took them through a valley dotted with residences, and then wove back into the turbulent landscape. Rising above the limestone domes was something that, while impressive, would only have been beautiful to an engineer — a gray-white spire, stabbing straight into the heavens. Large cables stretching away from the tower became visible as they climbed out of the valley. The tips of two more spires appeared further off in the distance, to form the three corners of a triangle. The cables were connected to an enormous structure of exposed metal beams — Jenna thought it looked like an unfinished suspension bridge — that seemed to hover above the tree tops. A huge geodesic dome dangled below the framework. Jenna recognized it as a radar dome, similar to the kind used on newer naval vessels. Given their destination, that made perfect sense.

“The Arecibo Observatory,” Soter said, slipping into tour guide mode. “The largest single aperture radio telescope in the world. This is where we received the second signal, hidden in background radiation. It has guided our journey and brought us full circle.”

He turned to face her and added, “You might recognize it. It’s been featured in a number of films.”

Jenna resisted an urge to shrug indifferently. “Looks like a busy place.”

“The observatory is a popular tourist attraction. Public funding for the sciences has always been meager, so it’s necessary to generate new streams of revenue. In this case, a comprehensive visitors’ center at the base of that tower.” He gave a conspiratorial smile. “Of course, my research is very well-funded. I have been able to pass some of that along, which has given me a great deal of influence with the administrators. We won’t need to stand in line today.”

The traffic on the road leading up to the remote site was heavier than she expected, especially on a Sunday. A line of cars and buses traveled toward the observatory. A few cars passed them going the opposite direction. The rain had not kept anyone away.

When they reached a junction, Cray turned out of the queue and headed up a solitary road toward a tall building. A blinking red light on a sign caught Jenna’s attention. The legend on the placard, written in both English and Spanish read: ‘Unshielded vehicles do not pass this point with red light.’ Cray did not stop.

“The 430 MHz transmitter can fry the electronics of older cars,” Soter explained. “Our ignition system is protected.”

Jenna wondered vaguely if they ought to be concerned about the effects of the radio waves on their bodies, but assumed that any such hazard would have long since been addressed by the scientists who operated the facility. Soter’s mention of the transmitter had raised a much more immediate question. “What exactly is it that you want me to do?”

“It will make more sense once we are inside.”

Jenna found this answer woefully inadequate. “You think you can just sit me down in front of a space radio and…what? Suddenly it will all just pop into my head? How to talk to them? What to say?” Too late, it occurred to her that she was letting her emotions take over. She narrowed her eyes, fixing his gaze, and when she spoke again, her tone was much softer. “I’m sorry, Helio…can I call you Helio? Doctor Soter just seems so formal, and…we’re family.”

He nodded slowly, almost reluctantly. His eyes darted away for a moment, but she waited until he was looking at her again to resume speaking. “Helio, it’s just that anything you can tell me about what’s really going on would help. A lot.”

She watched Mercy in her peripheral vision, wondering if the woman—my sister? Mother? Clone? Double? — would recognize what she was attempting to do. She thought it unlikely. These were tricks Noah had taught Jenna. Not some manifestation of mutant-alien superpowers.

“Yes. Of course. I’m not trying to withhold information, my dear. It’s just that it will be easier to explain once you’ve seen the signal.”

“The signal? The message with the DNA sequence?”

Another nod. “It may be that seeing the message for yourself might have a stimulating effect on that part of your brain where the genetic memory is stored.”

His eyes darted ever so slightly away as he said it. He wasn’t being completely forthcoming, and yet what he had said was, at its core, truthful.

“Is that all?” The message was the key component to all of this, but why did he believe that seeing her own genetic code would have any kind of effect? Maybe there’s more to it? “What about the rest of the message?”

His look of surprise confirmed that she had made the right guess. “You are every bit as remarkable as I had hoped, my dear. Yes, there is a portion of the message that we have not been able to make sense of, even after all these years of research. It’s a long binary sequence. Coming at the end of the message as it does, it may simply be normal background radiation, but it might also be a sort of signature, the sender signing off, as a HAM radio operator might do.”

All these years of research. The words triggered a cascade of questions and Jenna had to fight to maintain her pleasant demeanor. “That’s right. You’ve been working at this for a long time. I know you told me, but why didn’t you have Mercy or one of the others do this?”

Something changed in the old man’s expression, like a curtain falling over a stage in the middle of a play. “With each successive generation, we were able to fine-tune the DNA sequence. The early generations…lacked something…but you, my dear, were the most perfect expression of the message, thus my hope that you will be able to unlock its final secrets.”

This time he was lying, but not about his intentions. What had he said earlier about Kelli Foster and Jarrod Chu? Generation Six, cultivated in 1984…an almost perfect match to the genome code. He was holding something back, something that concerned him enough that he was dodging her subtle manipulations.

She decided not to press him too hard just yet. “Oh. I figured it must be something like that. I’m surprised you didn’t come round me up sooner. I mean, since you knew where I was.”

“I was sorely tempted. Thirty-seven years is a very long time to wait for an answer. But it was important to allow your abilities to fully develop. If not for this threat to your safety, I would have been content to wait a few more years.”

Once more, she sensed an omission, but before she could figure out where to probe next, the car pulled to a stop and Cray shut off the engine. Over the steady drum of rain on the roof, Jenna could hear a loud rumble like an industrial generator.

Soter peered through the rivulets of water streaming down the windows, then threw the door open. “I’ve forgotten my umbrella. I fear we shall all get wet.”

“Won’t be the first time today,” Jenna replied. Mercy gave a good-natured groan.

Outside the car, the noise was even louder, making conversation impossible. “That’s the transmitter,” Soter shouted, waving for them to follow.

A second car pulled up beside theirs. Four men wearing rain slickers got out and joined their procession. Jenna guessed they were part of Soter’s security force. They certainly didn’t fit her stereotype of what astronomers were supposed to look like.

Cray hurried ahead to the front door of the building and held it open for the others. As Soter had warned, the brief trek from the car to the structure left them all soaked, but the downpour didn’t dampen Soter’s enthusiasm. After shaking off as much water as he could, he took the lead, guiding them inside with child-like eagerness. His cane was all but forgotten, tucked under one arm, as he moved. Cray and Markley brought up the rear, while the other four men remained outside.

The mechanical noise was dulled, but Jenna could feel vibrations rising through the floor and emanating from the walls. The transmitter was inside the building. Soter ushered them into a dimly lit room that reminded Jenna of the signal room in Cort’s safe house, but on a much larger scale. Computer servers lined the walls, along with a variety of other electronic devices and their blinking red and green LEDs. A few of these were no bigger, and looked no more sophisticated, than a citizen’s band radio, while others looked like the sound controls at a rock concert. Soter moved past these, his wet shoes squeaking on the black and white checkerboard tile floor. He led them to an area that had been partitioned into smaller workspaces. Each desktop held no less than four computer monitors, and each screen displayed incomprehensible graphical and textual data. A broad window, looking out at the metal-frame structure Jenna had glimpsed from the road, stretched across the wall beyond the workstations.

Soter approached one of the men working in the room and shook his hand. After a brief exchange, the man turned to his co-workers and said simply, “Lunch time.”

After the events of the last two days, Jenna didn’t trust her internal clock, but she was fairly certain that it was only about ten in the morning. That the men were ceding the room to Soter bore testimony to his influence, and made Jenna wonder again about the source of his funding. Cort’s assertion that the project had been run by the Soviet Union, and then later by the Russian government, seemed less likely here on American soil, but she couldn’t rule it out completely. Foreign or domestic, Soter would have had to cover his tracks very well, especially with the CIA gunning for him.

When they were alone, Soter gestured for Jenna to join him at a desk near the window. As she approached, she caught a glimpse of the panorama that lay beyond the glass.

“Whoa. Now I see what all the fuss is about.”

Soter grinned. “Quite impressive, isn’t it?”

Impressive was one word for it. Spread out before them, directly below the hanging structure, and hovering next to and above the surrounding treetops, was a vast bowl-shaped depression, silvery-gray like exposed concrete, stained a darker shade in some places, presumably from long years of exposure. Jenna knew there would be a satellite reflector dish of some kind, but nothing on this scale. “It looks like God dropped a contact lens.”

“An apt simile,” Soter said, “since it is a lens of a sort — our lens for gazing back into the heavens.”

There was something familiar about it, and Jenna recalled Soter’s comment about the observatory being featured in several movies. The dish, or something very nearly identical to it, had appeared in a James Bond movie, one of Noah’s favorites from the series, though as was his custom, he found plenty to complain about. Noah had been a real James Bond, after all.

“The reflector is a thousand feet across, and the antenna assembly is suspended four hundred and thirty feet above it. The dish itself comprises almost thirty-nine thousand aluminum panels, all perfectly machined to create a spherical reflector. The location was chosen because of a naturally occurring sinkhole crater, but the dish is suspended above it.”

Jenna looked at it more closely and could just make out the square lines where the individual panels were joined — not solid concrete like in the movie. They totally got that wrong, she thought, and then realized that it was exactly the sort of thing Noah would have said.

Soter clapped his hands together. “Enough about that. We can give you the full tour later, but for now let us focus on the task at hand.”

He leaned over one of the computers and inserted a flash drive into the USB port. After a few keystrokes, he stepped back and gestured for Jenna to sit.

As the screen began to fill up with data, ones and zeroes on one side, and an endless string of just four letters on the other, Jenna felt a growing apprehension. Those numbers and letters were the blueprint for creating her, transmitted across space by some unknown alien intelligence. She wanted to turn and run, but instead, as if compelled by an invisible force, she took a seat and began to read.

46

The computer hard drive whirred as it struggled to download and open the enormous file. Jenna recalled learning that the entire human genome could be expressed in less than a gigabyte of drive space. That had probably seemed like a mountain of data in 1977, but by modern computing standards, it was the same size as a two hour movie. It was a little disconcerting to think that a person — and not just any person, but Jenna herself — could be reduced to bits and bytes of information. As she scanned the procession of letters — A,T,C and G — she found herself wondering which part had determined her hair color? The color of her eyes? Which parts made her into the unique entity that she was?

Only I’m not unique, am I? There are others out there, others like Kelli Foster and Jarrod Chu, and God only knows how many more.

No, not God. Soter knows.

“Ideally, I would ask you to read the entire message, but at over three billion characters, that would require weeks of reading, even with your extraordinary mental abilities.” Soter said the last bit as if speaking from experience.

So the others have read the message, Jenna thought, but Soter was still speaking. “Once the file finishes loading, you can skip to the end. That is where the ‘signature’ is located.”

Despite his admonition, Jenna found herself fascinated by the contents of the file. She scrolled down a page, reading every single number and letter on the screen, downloading it into her brain almost as fast as the computer could read it from the flash drive. As she read, she began to get the sense that, with just a little more information, she might be able to interpret what she was seeing.

As a young girl, she had once seen an advertisement written in Spanish. She had not learned how to speak that language — though she later would — but she remembered it, just as she remembered everything she saw and heard. When the opportunity arose to get a translation, she saw the sign again in her mind’s eye, perfectly comprehensible. That was how she felt now. Even though there was only an endless stream of letters, not divided by spaces, punctuation or any sort of pattern that would be recognizable to the average person, she felt sure that with just a little bit more knowledge, she would be able to read it from her memory like a book.

Page down.

Page down.

Page down.

She scanned faster and faster…two pages per second…three. Yet, as Soter had indicated, the file was enormous, and the scroll bar registered no visible movement with each click. The file was over three million pages long, and even if she had been able to read five pages per second, it would require seven days of non-stop reading to finish.

“There,” Soter announced. “It’s finished. You can skip to the end. It’s still in binary I’m afraid. We were never able to differentiate values. But I believe you will see the pattern.”

Almost reluctantly, as if scrolling to the end of the message would be like skipping to the last page in a mystery novel, Jenna did as Soter suggested. The computer lagged in protest at the size of the file, and another interminable wait followed before the screen filled up again. Here, there were no corresponding letters of the DNA sequence. Only ones and zeroes.

This new message was different somehow. With the genetic information, even in binary, she knew there was a purpose and pattern to it all, but there was no contextual framework for the last part of the message. Though she recognized the digits, their random arrangement left her feeling muddled. She struggled to read the numbers. When she was done, she discovered she could not recall them with any degree of confidence. They had slipped from her memory. It was a new experience for her. She tried reading it again.

As she fought through the message a third time, the individual numbers fell out of her consciousness as quickly as they left her sight. She paused reading, but didn’t look away from the page as Cray approached Soter and whispered in his ear. From the corner of her eye, she could see Soter’s look of alarm, but it wasn’t quite enough to draw her away from her task. She returned to reading. The numbers were almost hypnotic in their slippery resistance to assimilation. She kept looking, afraid to even blink, lest the message disappear or change.

Jenna had not truly appreciated how unique her gift of memory was until a classmate had challenged her to ‘prove it.’ She had always assumed that lots of people possessed eidetic memories, but later research had revealed that even among those who claimed to possess the gift, there were limits to the ability. No one truly possessed what was mistakenly termed ‘photographic memory’ or perfect recall. And yet, she always had. She could read something and remember it line by line, or recall startling details from images or places she had visited, without any effort.

Only now did she realize that she had taken the ability for granted. It wasn’t just that her memory was letting her down. Her brain seemed to be lagging, just as the computer had when loading the file.

Soter gave a low harrumph of displeasure, then followed Cray to a side door that opened onto a balcony just outside the control room. The rumble of the transmitter increased again, but was oddly muted by the rain.

“Stay where you are!” Jenna recognized the voice as Soter’s, though his strident shout was different than his soft conversational tone.

“I’m unarmed.” The answering voice was barely audible over the tumult of the transmitter, but there was something familiar about it. The magnetism of curiosity pulled at her, even as her eyes refused to let go of the strange numerical sequence.

“What do you want?” Soter called.

Like a stubborn puzzle piece finally oriented correctly, the pattern emerged.

The numbers locked themselves into Jenna’s consciousness, and with that realization, a door opened in her mind. Yet as she mentally stepped toward that door, she heard the distant voice answer Soter’s question.

The spell broken, she surged to her feet and crossed the room in three steps, heedless of Mercy’s cry, “Jenna, no!”

Some part of her wondered if Mercy had heard as well, and if the purpose for her warning was to safeguard Jenna’s emotional health as much as her physical. It was a fleeting thought. No force on Earth could have stopped her.

She burst out onto the balcony, right behind Soter. Cray saw her and made a half-hearted attempt to restrain her, but he was already too late. Jenna’s eyes met those of the man who had just a moment before shouted: “I want to talk to my daughter.”

Standing on the rain-soaked grass less than fifty feet away was Noah Flood.

47

Jenna had not thought it possible for her world to be shaken any more than it already had, but Noah’s appearance was another roller coaster plunge into the impossible.

Rivulets of rain dripped from his hair and nose. His eyes found her and his craggy face broke into a relieved smile. His lips formed her name, but she couldn’t tell if he had said it aloud.

A dam broke inside her. Every emotion she had experienced in the last two days in connection with this man — admiration, grief, rage, acceptance — deluged her. She wanted to scream at him for taking away an existence that had never truly been hers. She wanted to rush down the fire stairs and hug him, and never let go.

My daughter.

That was what he had said, and she desperately wanted to believe he felt that way. And yet, the very fact that he was here, that he had tracked her down, told a different tale. He was working with Cort. It was the only explanation. And that meant he was trying to draw her out so that the government agents could finish their deadly assignment.

She searched his face, looking for some hint of what to believe, knowing even as she did that he was too skilled in the arts of deception to ever reveal the truth. A thousand questions ran through her mind, but all she could say was, “I thought you were dead.”

His smile became a grin. “I’m too ornery to die,” he called back.

Jenna realized now that her assumption about his fate had been made at the start of the nightmare, when all she knew about violence was what she had seen in Noah’s movies, where people dropped dead from a single gunshot, because that’s what the script called for. Her own experience had revealed just how much punishment a human body could actually take, yet at no time had it occurred to her that Noah’s wound might have been only superficial.

Soter turned on her. “Go back inside, Jenna. This man is not your father. He’s here to kill you.”

Noah spoke quickly. “Jenna, you have to listen to me. I know what you’re thinking, but remember what I taught you. Listen to your gut…”

“But make up my own damn mind,” she finished, repeating it like a mantra. Her guts were so twisted, she had no idea what they were trying to tell her.

“He hasn’t told you the whole truth,” Noah continued.

And just how would you know that? She didn’t say it aloud, and despite the fact that she did not want to trust this man who had lied to her about everything, she knew he was right. Soter was holding something back.

“He told you some story about aliens with a message of peace, right? There are no aliens, Jenna. He lied to you about that.”

Jenna shook her head. “He wasn’t lying.”

Noah inclined his head. “Okay, not lying. Maybe he believes that’s what happened, but it’s not the real story. That message didn’t originate from deep space. It was from Earth, bounced off a piece of orbiting space junk.”

“Preposterous,” snarled Soter. “Who’s trying to deceive you now, my child?”

“The Soviets created the whole thing as a disinformation campaign. They wanted us chasing our tails, wasting resources looking for aliens where there weren’t any. And it worked. He spent millions — the equivalent of billions today — on a hoax.”

“A hoax?” Soter was incredulous. “A hoax that contained the entire human genome more than a decade before geneticists were able to even begin unraveling the mysteries of DNA?”

“You saw what you wanted to see,” Noah countered, then turned his gaze back to Jenna. “But that’s only half of it. His clones — Jenna, it kills me to say it — they’re not stable. There’s something wrong with them.”

He kept speaking, talking over Soter’s protest, pushing past the unpleasantness of his revelation the way a parent tears off a Band-Aid in one quick jerk. “I know you know about this Jenna. About the SARS virus in China and the cyber-attack here in America. The DNA recipe he cooked up gave the clones extraordinary abilities, but it also took something from them, something that made them human.”

“You don’t think I’m human?” Jenna’s voice sounded very small, as if her breath could not quite get past the hurt and rage she now felt. She was angry at Noah for saying such horrible things, but she was also very afraid because she knew he wasn’t lying.

“Oh, Jenna.” Noah’s pained look appeared genuine. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. You have to believe that. We can get through whatever comes. I believe that, and I want you to believe it, too. But you have to know the truth, and he’s not going to tell it to you.

“It’s something that happens to the clones when they reach adulthood. It’s like a switch gets thrown. I’ve seen the evidence, heard from the people who worked with Jarrod Chu and Kelli Foster. They changed.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s like something was hardwired into their DNA. It’s in you, too.”

Like a switch gets thrown.

The words slammed through her and brought to mind Soter’s reluctant explanation of his plan to show her the signature portion of the message.

Seeing the message for yourself might have a stimulating effect on that part of your brain where the genetic memory is stored.

It was important to allow your abilities to fully develop…to reach maturity.

She could not tell if Noah was being truthful, but Soter was an open book, and she saw the truth of the accusation in his eyes. He seemed on the verge of boiling over with righteous indignation, but his expression told a different tale.

He knows.

And I read the message.

Unbidden, the entire binary sequence flashed before her eyes, a siren song in ones and zeroes, irresistible. Look, it sang, all you have to do is look, and all will be revealed.

Jenna’s knees went weak, and she staggered back against the wall. Through the rush of blood in her ears, she heard Soter’s insistent denial. “It’s not true, Jenna. He’s lying.”

Even in her state of shock, she knew that it was Soter, not Noah, who was hiding the truth, and not just from her.

He must have known all along that there was something defective in their — in our — DNA. No wonder he kept going, year after year, tweaking the genome, trying to figure out why his ‘children’ were turning into sociopaths. She doubted that it was Soter’s intention to unleash monsters on the world. He seemed to care only about making contact with the extraterrestrial architects of the message.

Noah was wrong on that score. The signal wasn’t a Soviet-era plot. It was far too sophisticated, even by twenty-first century standards. It was most certainly the product of a very advanced intelligence, probably an alien intelligence, and that meant its potential for disaster went far beyond anything dreamed up during the Cold War. The message was a trigger, activating the mental equivalent of a computer virus that lay dormant in the genetic memory of the clones. That’s exactly what she and her siblings were: a dormant virus, sent in a radio transmission, designed to crash the entire planet.

Jenna wondered if it had been a similar incident fifteen years earlier that had prompted Noah’s mission to terminate Soter’s project with extreme prejudice. Had a first or second generation clone read the message and then tried to destroy the world?

It’s in me, Jenna thought again. Even now, it’s trying to burn its way through my mind.

What will happen if I let it? Will I still be me?

She pushed away from the wall, took a halting step toward the balcony rail, and addressed Noah. “Are you here to kill me?”

“Never.” Noah shook his head vehemently. “They wanted me to. They’re terrified of what you might do, but I convinced them to give us a chance.”

“A chance?”

“Don’t trust him,” Soter repeated. “He’s a killer. He killed your brothers and sisters. He killed my friends. He’ll say anything to stop you from fulfilling your destiny.”

“My destiny?” she repeated, incredulous. Soter’s words were a slap in her face. “Is that all you care about?”

The mathematician realized his mistake. “Of course not.”

“He’s right, you know. That message that you care about so much? It’s an alien Trojan Horse, and you brought it right inside the gates.”

Soter shook his head. “No, no. It’s not true. We just had to refine the genome.”

Noah spoke again. “Jenna, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I will be there for you. I won’t leave you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Jenna felt utterly alone. She wondered what Mercy would do in her situation — Mercy who clearly thought of Soter as a father, and yet had defended Noah, even when Jenna had been ready to reject him completely. But Mercy was still in the control room, and Jenna knew that if she stepped back inside, it would be the same as choosing Soter’s path. Besides, while Mercy might have been able to advise her about which man to choose for a father, she could not understand what was truly at stake.

If I choose to go with Noah, I might get killed. If I stay with Soter, I might destroy the world.

Not such a tough choice after all, Jenna thought, and started moving.

48

She made it just two steps before Soter realized what she was doing. “No!” he cried, and then lurched forward, arms thrown wide as if to seize her in his embrace.

At that instant, something cracked against the control room window, smashing the pane into a million glittering fragments. The unexpected destruction caught everyone on the balcony off-guard, even Jenna. She came to a halt almost as abruptly as she had started moving in the first place. There was something familiar about the scene, but it took a moment for Jenna and everyone else on the balcony to grasp the significance of the shattered window.

Noah however, caught on right away. “No, damn it!”

His exclamation jolted Jenna to alertness. A sniper, she thought. Just like Ken on the roof of the bait shop. But is the sniper shooting at Soter or me?

She felt like she knew the answer, and that led to another, more ominous line of questions.

Was Noah lying to me? Was all his talk just a way to lure me out to where the sniper could finish the job?

Jenna wanted to believe that Noah loved her. Maybe they — Cort or whoever was running the show now — had lied to him, promised him that she would be given safe passage, so that he would flush her out. Or maybe he thinks I’m damaged beyond repair. That I need to be put down, like a rabid pet.

She didn’t want that to be true, but there was no way to know.

A moment later, Soter crashed into her, tackling her to the balcony deck. Cray’s gun was out in an instant, and the report of the distant sniper rifle, only now reaching her ears, was eclipsed by the closer and louder thunder of his answering fire, directed at the only target available.

Noah scrambled away, running for the corner of the building, but even as he broke for cover, more shots began pelting the exterior of the building. Tiny spurts of flame scattered throughout the verdant landscape marked the position of at least half a dozen camouflaged shooters. Noah had not come alone.

Cray dropped into a crouch and lunged toward her. He scooped Jenna up in one hand, Soter in the other, and hustled them through the door as the balcony exploded in a spray of splinters.

Jenna wrestled free of his grip and crawled deeper into the relative safety of the control room. She spied Mercy, huddled behind a desk, and headed toward her. Bullets sizzled through the air overhead, smacking into the walls and ceiling, spraying dust and filling the room with the smell of smoke. But none of the shots came anywhere close to a human target. This was suppressive fire, Jenna knew, designed to keep them pinned down.

Soter seemed to grasp this as well. From his fetal curl on the floor he shouted, “Cray. Get her to safety.”

Cray hesitated, as if torn between his loyalty to the old man and his sense of duty, but he gave a terse nod and reached out to Jenna. “Come on.”

Jenna nodded her assent, then grasped Mercy’s hand and followed Cray’s lead toward the exit to the stairwell. Before leaving the room, he shouted to his partner, Markley. “We’ll try to lead them off. Stay with the doctor, and get the hell out of here as soon as you can.”

“No!” Soter protested. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. You have to save the girl.”

Jenna was not inclined to argue. Cray shook his head and then led Jenna and Mercy from the room, gun at the ready. “Stay close,” he said, not looking back.

Over the mechanical hum of the transmitter, the sound of a pitched battle rolled up from below. Soter’s security detail was putting up a fight, defending the transmitter building, but there were only four of them. Four against at least six shooters. Worse, there was only one way out of the building, and it went right through the middle of the fight. Jenna looked at Mercy, hoping to see some indication that she knew what Cray was doing, but Mercy’s blank look told her otherwise.

Jenna felt a return of the helplessness she’d experienced in Miami when she had boarded Soter’s helicopter. She didn’t even have a gun to defend herself. Her survival depended on Cray’s choices, and that was intolerable.

She was about to tell Cray that when he did something unexpected, turning away from the exit, toward parts of the building they had not visited.

“Where are we going?” It wasn’t simple curiosity that prompted her question.

“There’s another way out,” Cray said. “Through the transmitter room.”

Another way out was good. “Won’t they be watching all the doors?”

“Probably.” Cray didn’t break stride, but kept moving toward the source of the persistent thrumming sound. They passed through a maze of corridors, in and out of rooms lined with strange electronic devices, pieces of machinery and shelves packed with bound books and thick three-ring binders.

Cray stopped at a door that was plastered with signs. There were hazardous materials diamonds and cartoon lightning bolts accompanying a warning of high voltage electrical hazards, the familiar black-on-yellow radiation trefoil and strangest of all: a notice reading ‘Liquefied gas coolants in use.’ Cray turned the knob and shoved the door, but entered cautiously, sweeping the room beyond with his gun barrel. After a moment, he waved for them to follow.

The noise emanating from the room was deafening, drowning out even the sporadic report of gunfire. Jenna scanned the room for the hazards indicated in the signs. Everything she saw was unfamiliar and full of dangerous potential. There were large cylinders marked with more hazmat diamonds, and a machine that looked like it belonged on the weapon’s deck of a star cruiser from a science fiction film. One corner was dominated by an enormous cube-shaped machine that seemed to be the source of the noise. The dull gray metal sheathing the device was adorned with still more warnings of radiation danger. Next to it was yet another door, this one marked with a sign that said ‘Danger: High Voltage.’ Jenna peered through the wire-lined glass window and saw another enormous room and at its center, a strange yellow pillar wrapped in wires, sprouting from a metal donut-shaped base. It looked like a scaled-up version of the Van Der Graaf static electricity generator in Jenna’s science classroom.

“Please tell me we’re not going through there.”

Cray shook his head and moved toward the opposite wall. A large metal roll-up door was set in the concrete, big enough to accommodate a truck. He reached for the pull-chain that would open it, when a loud concussion tore through the room like a thunderclap.

Cray staggered, falling against the door. A bloody Rorschach pattern was left on the metal where he’d hit. But he wasn’t dead. Cray pushed away, turning with his gun raised, and he fired several shots toward the door through which they had entered.

Jenna pulled Mercy down, seeking refuge behind one of the work benches, as bullets creased the air, filling the room with the stench of burned gunpowder. The walls exploded with chips of concrete dust and sparks, as rounds ricocheted off metal surfaces. The gunman pushed into the room, firing as he moved, trying to get a clear shot at his real target. Another man stood at the entrance, firing at Cray to keep him pinned down.

The significance of this was not lost on Jenna. Soter’s security force had almost certainly been defeated by the overwhelming numbers of the assault team. There was no one left to defend her now.

Another round caught Cray, spattering the wall behind him with blood, but he kept firing, chasing the first shooter in a desperate bid to stop him from reaching Jenna.

There was a sound like a bell being rung, followed by a hiss of escaping gas. A bullet had penetrated one of the pressurized gas cylinders. White vapor spewed into the air.

Jenna drew in a breath and held it, knowing it would not be enough. The gas was probably a coolant — liquid nitrogen or maybe helium — more likely to flash freeze than suffocate them. Yet, despite this new peril, the shooting continued without cease. Still gripping Mercy’s hand, Jenna searched the room for a better hiding place, somewhere further from the gas. Before she could find anything, the gunman appeared, right above them, so close that Jenna could see wisps of smoke curling from the muzzle of his pistol. With a grim but satisfied smile, his finger tightened on the trigger.

Jenna attempted to move away, knowing it was too late, but Mercy remained rooted, anchor-like.

Then the world exploded.

49

This is the way the world ends…

The line from an old poem sprang into her thoughts, which was strange, because even though she recognized it, she also knew that she had never heard or read those words before, had no idea what the poem was called or who the poet was.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

She vividly recalled her teacher, standing at the lectern, summarizing the long litany of evils plaguing the globe. “The world is infected, and the disease is called ‘humanity.’ We are a cancer, devouring the healthy organism of the world, consuming its resources, propagating our own numbers beyond carrying capacity. And when we are warned of the danger, when we are shown that to kill the world is to kill ourselves, we refuse to listen. We will be the death of our world, and we will meet our end with a whimper.”

The prospect filled her with anger. Humanity, so arrogant, so greedy… What better way to describe the species than as a cancer? The Earth, once so full of beauty and wonder, was now choking in filth, its horizons marred by towers of concrete and steel like a malevolent grin full of broken teeth. The night sky was curtained with ugly artificial light, blotting out the stars.

Strange that she couldn’t quite remember when she had heard this lecture. The memory was so vivid, but like the details of the poem, she could not put it in the appropriate context.

No matter. The diagnosis was beyond question. That was the important thing. Humans were incapable of solving the problem because they were the problem. If there was to be a treatment for the cancer of humanity — a radical treatment — it would have to come from somewhere else.

And it had.

It all made sense now. The message Dr. Soter had received was a sort of viral therapy, and it had worked. Without even knowing why, Soter had created the antibodies that would purge the world of this plague by accelerating humanity’s own self-destructive impulses. It would take only a nudge or two: a false-flag bioterrorism incident or a subversive cyber-attack, and the superpowers of the world might unleash a cleansing nuclear fire.

Wipe the slate clean.

But first, the message. Everything was ready. The dominoes were poised to fall. But before the last phase of the treatment was to be initiated, one task remained. She remembered the time, which had very nearly arrived, and the place, which was thousands of miles away. If she was not able to get there in time, one of the others would.

She felt a sublime satisfaction in the knowledge that the cancer of humanity would be purged soon, and her own purpose in life would be fulfilled.

Too bad that Mercy and Noah would be swept away, but radical treatments often damaged healthy cells. It was for the greater good.

No, she thought suddenly. There has to be another way. I don’t want to lose them again.

Don’t be foolish, argued another voice, her teacher’s voice, but also weirdly enough, her own. You know it’s for the best. It’s what has to happen.

I know? How do I know? How do I know any of this?

And then the answer came like a flash of light.

50

Light, brilliant beyond description, painful in its intensity. Then, darkness.

The memory of the teacher’s words slipped away like the last echoes of a dream, as Jenna embraced the physical sensations that were her lifeline out of the void.

Her ears rang, overloaded by the cacophonous detonation. The harsh smell of ozone stung her nostrils, and smoke burned her unseeing eyes. She felt the pain of a concussion — not a bullet slamming into her, but something much bigger, like what she had experienced when the Kilimanjaro had exploded. There was also the memory of something else, a tingling sensation that had caressed her exposed skin in the instant before the blast. A crazy thought burbled to the top of her rattled awareness: I’ve been struck by lightning.

Crazy, only because she knew that she had not been struck. That she retained the wherewithal to sort that out was proof enough. Nevertheless, the flash and thunderclap could have come only from a catastrophic electrical discharge.

The darkness became a greenish haze. Nothing bore any resemblance to the world that had existed only a few seconds before. A soft whimper reached her ear through the silence.

Silence? Yes. Her hearing was returning, but the noise of the transmitter and the staccato bursts of gunfire were gone. Her first thought was that the explosion had knocked out the transmitter, but as her awareness returned she realized the exact opposite was true. The transmitter, or rather its power supply, had caused the devastation that now surrounded her. In all likelihood, a stray bullet had penetrated the door to the high voltage room and struck some critical component — the tall yellow pillar was probably a capacitor, storing massive amounts of voltage for use by the radio transmitter. The result had been an artificially produced lightning bolt, as destructive and unpredictable as the real thing.

She was still clutching Mercy’s hand. In the dimness she could distinguish Mercy’s sprawled form, but not much else. “Mercy? Are you okay?”

Another whimper. Jenna took that as a positive sign. Her vision continued to improve, but what she saw was not encouraging. Black smoke poured in from where there had once been a door marked with a high voltage sign. “Mercy, we have to get out of here.”

As Jenna rose to her feet, unsteady, she saw the man who had been about to shoot her, reduced to a charred, vaguely human form. By the look of it, he had been the focal point of the discharge. Another unmoving form was visible at the entrance to the room — the other shooter, stunned, but alive. He had been much further from the discharge than she, and it was a wonder that he hadn’t already recovered. Jenna doubted she could make it past him, and even if she did, there would be others lying in wait. If she and Mercy were going to escape, it would have to be through the roll-up door, as Cray had intended.

Cray! She looked around and found him, sitting with his back against the wall beside the big door. His shirt was saturated with blood, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain. He just sat there, gazing at her with unblinking eyes. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything. Cray was dead.

“Wake up. We’ve got to get moving.” She tugged on Mercy’s hand again until the woman stirred. Mercy mumbled something but Jenna shushed her. “We’ve got to get out of here. Come on.”

She pulled away from Mercy. Every second was critical. Mercy would have to recover on her own while Jenna blazed their escape route. She half-crawled to where Cray had fallen, and she found his pistol still gripped in one dead hand. Something looked strange about it. The end of the barrel protruded a full half-inch from the body of the weapon.

It’s empty, she realized. Cray had fired off his last round.

Steeling herself, she drew back his blood-soaked windbreaker to uncover the shoulder holster tucked beneath his left arm — empty like the pistol — then she checked the other side. There, she discovered two small pouches. Each contained a full magazine. She deftly liberated both, and then returned her attention to the handgun.

It was the same design as the pistol Mercy had given her to use during their futile escape attempt on the Overseas Highway, although it was slightly larger.

Mercy was alert now, staring aghast at Cray’s motionless form. Jenna hurried back to her and offered the weapon. “Here,” she said, hoping that a meaningful task would break Mercy from her daze. “You know what to do, right?”

Mercy tore her gaze from the dead man and nodded. With practiced efficiency, she ejected the empty magazine and slotted a replacement into the pistol grip, released the slide, and then racked it once to advance a round into the firing chamber.

Jenna returned to the door and took hold of the dangling chain. “They might be waiting out there,” she warned, and then without further comment, she started pulling.

The door rose slowly, revealing rain-spattered pavement. Mercy ducked down, training the pistol on the widening stripe of revealed daylight, but did not fire. Jenna raised the door just a couple feet and stopped. She dropped down and peered through the opening.

The half-expected ambush did not occur, but Jenna saw too many places where a gunman might be concealed — parked cars, two small modular buildings that looked like trailers and the terrain itself.

“We have to make a run for it.” She did not add that she had no idea where they would go next. Mercy nodded her readiness.

Jenna wriggled under the door and scrambled toward the nearest car, Mercy right behind her. Still no sign of the assault team — no sign of Noah. An ominous quiet had descended over the area. The transmitter was dead, and the gun battle had ended.

She swept the panorama, looking for a route to freedom. Directly ahead lay the road, and somewhere beyond that, the visitor’s center Soter had mentioned. They might be able to lose themselves in the crowd, or find someone to help them…

No. These men wouldn’t let innocent lives stand in the way of completing their mission, and there was no longer anyone left to help them.

Noah?

The thought stung. Just when she had been ready to believe his declaration of love, his promise to help, the jaws of the trap had snapped shut. Looking to Noah for help was worse than letting the shooters run them down.

“We have to go where they won’t think to look for us,” she told Mercy. “Follow me.”

Staying low, she skirted the parking area toward the corner of the transmitter building. After verifying that the coast was clear, she darted into the lee shadow of the structure. From this new vantage, she saw the bundled cables overhead, snaking from the nearest tower to the suspended antenna assembly far out over the dish.

She considered climbing onto the cable and making her way out to the array. It was definitely the last place anyone would think to look, but it was also a dead end. Even if they could make the precarious journey unnoticed, they would be trapped four hundred feet above the ground.

But the dish was another story. From the control room, it had looked like an enormous empty swimming pool excavated from the surrounding landscape, but Soter had revealed that it was actually made up of aluminum panels, built above the ground. The edge of the dish was only a hundred yards away. If they could make it under the reflector panels, they’d have far more options.

She told Mercy her plan, leaving no room for argument. There was none. Mercy just nodded, looking a little shell-shocked. When Jenna started forward, creeping along the perimeter of the building, Mercy stayed right behind her. They stopped again at the next corner. The dish was visible below, a massive spherical bowl. A narrow tree-lined road ran down to its edge. The slope and slick pavement would make keeping their footing a little tricky, but Jenna estimated that a sprint of no more than thirty seconds would bring them to their goal. She checked the surrounding area for any sign of hostile forces, and then gripped Mercy’s hand again.

“Ready?”

“Not really,” Mercy admitted. “But let’s do this.”

Jenna nodded, and then because she could not think of a better way to coordinate their mad dash, gave the classic track and field prompt: “Ready, set, go!”

As they ran, Jenna expected to hear gunshots or feel the impact of a bullet, but what happened was much worse. Two-thirds of the way to her goal a shout reached her, an all too familiar voice, rolling down the slope, echoing from the surrounding limestone formations.

Noah’s voice.

“Jenna!”

51

She looked back, even though she knew it was a mistake to do so, and she stumbled.

The fall seemed to take forever, yet no matter how she flailed her arms, she could not recover her balance. Instead, she pitched and twisted, past the horizontal plane, and went skidding face first on the wet asphalt. The abrasive surface tore at her skin and clothes like sandpaper. There was no immediate pain, just a jolt of impact that knocked the wind from her sails.

Mercy skidded to a stop beside her, one hand extended, but before Jenna could take it, something struck the pavement near her outflung arm, showering her with hot grit. She didn’t need to hear the report to know that someone was shooting at them.

Noah’s voice came again, shouting, but the words were incomprehensible. Seething with anger — at Noah for yet another betrayal, at herself for having been foolish enough to react — all she could hear was the roar of blood in her ears. In that instant, the weight of all that she had endured — the exhausting flight from the killers, the ordeal in the Everglades, too many gut-wrenching revelations to count — descended upon her like an extinction-level-sized asteroid. She had learned unimaginable truths about herself, been put through the wringer, and it was all for nothing. She was going to die.

No! No, I’m not! Her defiance felt hollow.

“Just run!” she shouted, ignoring Mercy’s offer of assistance. “Go!”

Jenna rolled toward the edge of the path and sprang to her feet. She took off, a millisecond ahead of a shower of bullets that tore into the hillside behind her.

Twenty more yards.

Ten.

The reflector was ringed by a protective barrier that looked like a partially tipped over chain-link fence. It loomed overhead, but the road continued into the space beneath the aluminum panels, past another caution sign, this one a red and black diamond with the words “Warning Radio Frequency Radiation Hazard.” Probably don’t have to worry about that anymore, she thought. The road turned across the face of the concave slope, spiraling around it toward the center, more than five hundred feet away.

Made it.

“We made it!” As she plunged beneath the suspended dish, she glanced back to make sure Mercy was still with her.

Mercy was not with her. Mercy was nowhere to be seen.

No!

Jenna wheeled around, almost stumbling again, and charged back up to the edge of bowl, shouting Mercy’s name as she went. Had Mercy been hit? Had she sought cover in the woods? Jenna had to know.

No, you don’t. You can’t help her now.

Jenna ignored the cautionary inner voice, but when she reached the top and caught sight of two gunmen coming down the road toward her, she knew there was nothing more she could do for Mercy. As she ducked back down, a barrage of gunfire rattled into the underside of the reflector.

She turned off the road, but the ground was not as open as it had first appeared. Cables stretched like spider webs from the bottom of the dish to concrete footings that dotted the slope like the stumps of hewn trees, creating an obstacle course. The thin layer of soil underfoot was saturated, held together by nothing more than roots and inertia. With every step, the hill slid away beneath her. She pushed on, ducking under cables, slipping and sliding her way to the bottom of the depression.

Up close, the panels did not appear solid. Perforated with millions of holes like a sieve, they were about as opaque as a window screen. The raindrops that struck the panels did not stay there long, but collected together into streams of water that poured down onto the dense carpet of ferns that lay spread out beneath the reflector. As she descended deeper into the bowl, the runoff became a veritable waterfall, feeding small rivers that swept toward the center of the hollow.

Movement drew her eyes. A car sped along the corkscrew road more than a hundred yards away. It seemed too far off to worry about, and the road would take it even further away, but it would eventually, inevitably, come back toward her.

A small structure lay directly ahead — a shed or platform of some kind. It offered the best chance at cover and concealment. It was the obvious choice. The too obvious choice. But Jenna saw that it reached up almost to the underside of the dish. In a flash of intuition, she realized that this was by design. The platform was elevated so that workmen could conduct routine maintenance on the dish.

If I can climb up there…

She let the thought go. It seemed like the only option, and she didn’t want to think about all the ways it might go awry. Behind her, the two gunmen on foot blundered down the hill, blocking any possibility of retreat. She angled toward the platform, even as the distant vehicle reached the apex of its orbit and began swinging around toward her.

I’m not going to make it.

The burden of her failures sapped the last of her will. Her leaden legs stumbled a few steps further, then she fell again, sprawling and sliding down the muddy slope.

I give up.

You have to live.

I can’t. Can’t run anymore.

You have work to do.

“What?”

Not quite knowing why, she struggled once more to her feet. The two gunmen were so close that she could see the exertion in their determined faces.

You have to live, the inner voice repeated. You have to escape.

Escape was impossible. She was being driven deeper into the funnel…

Funnel. That was exactly what it was. The limestone bowl caught all the rainwater that poured into it, and in the tropical environment, rain was a constant. The underside of the dish should have filled up like a lake.

Where does all that water go?

The streams carving across the slope supplied the answer. She lurched into motion once more, letting gravity draw her closer to the center.

She solved the mystery of the disappearing water a moment later. There was a gaping hole, like the entrance to a tunnel, or more precisely, a drain. It was enormous. To channel away the volume of water that accumulated in the basin, it had to be. Torrents of water from all around the bowl converged at the center and simply disappeared.

The car reached the end of the road near the platform, no more than fifty yards away. Even before it stopped, a door flew open and someone burst out like a jack-in-the-box: Noah, running toward her, shouting and waving. Another familiar figure emerged, close on his heels. It was Cort, limping on a wounded leg. The memory of shooting him in the safe-house gave Jenna a small glimmer of satisfaction, which she poured into a final burst of speed.

The drain loomed before her, a dark maw waiting to swallow her, bear her down to the bowels of the Earth, yet she knew that whatever uncertain outcome awaited below could be no worse than her fate if she remained.

When she was just ten feet away, she threw herself flat, into a channel of runoff that rushed by like white-water rapids. The water and her momentum carried her the rest of the way. As she slid over the edge, she felt no fear — only relief.

One way or another, it was finally over.

52

It wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. In the torturous moments that followed, Jenna wondered why she had imagined this to be a better alternative than the swift release of a bullet to the head.

She was simultaneously falling and drowning, hammered by the enormous volume of water and driven onto the anvil of an unseen slope. As she caromed from one jagged surface to the next, tumbling and spinning, she lost all sense of direction. Her lungs begged her to take a breath — water or air, it hardly mattered — but the pounding impacts left her unable to even gasp.

Something clipped the side of her head, just a glancing blow, but enough to drive a spike of pain through her skull. She wrapped her arms over her face, curling up into a protective ball, and braced herself for the next collision. She spun and bounced, slammed and scraped, blind and all but deafened by the roar of water. Yet through it all she remained conscious, and that eerily calm inner voice kept her company.

You have work to do.

She thought she knew what that meant. Her cloned siblings — men and women who had each followed different paths in life, and yet shared memories of something that had never actually happened — were preparing to trigger a chain reaction of destruction on the world.

Wipe the slate clean.

Jenna was not the only person who was aware of this, but she did know something that no one else knew — not Cort or Noah or any of the government assassins hunting the clones. She knew why they were doing it. She also knew that what had happened thus far — the SARS outbreak, the Internet attacks, and perhaps countless other acts of aggression and terror over the last two decades — were merely a prelude to what was about to occur. The attacks were merely preparatory moves, setting the stage for something that would trigger a global holocaust. But before the final act, the message had to be sent.

The message was the linchpin. Stop the message, and the planned destruction would be averted, or at the very least, postponed. Jenna knew from where and when the message would be sent, and only she was in a position to stop it.

Stop it? Why?

Tumbling through limestone tunnels like a spider in a downspout, the question of why—to say nothing of how—seemed unimportant. Yet, she was still alive, and as the miserable seconds stretched out into minutes, the impacts became less frequent. She could feel the rush of cool air on her face. She could breathe again! She was no longer falling, but being swept along in a subterranean river.

And sinking.

The chilly fresh water did not buoy her up the way salt water did, and as the crazy whitewater run slowed down, she was forced to uncurl her arms and legs and paddle to stay above the water line. After a few minutes, or perhaps only a few seconds, she felt herself moving faster again. The bottom rose up under her, scraping against her feet. Then without warning, she was falling again, vomited out of the cave and into daylight once more. The light was painfully bright after too much time in the darkness.

She tumbled down the face of a waterfall, splashed down into a pool beneath it, and was driven to the bottom by the force of the cascading water. Hydraulic eddies pinned her there, but she fought against them as she had everything and everyone else that had tried to kill her. After a brief struggle, she wrestled free of their grip and clawed her way to the surface.

The current, swift with the volume of rainwater feeding the river, caught hold of her. The water snaked between towering walls of limestone, slick with wet moss, impossible to climb. Jenna could do little more than tread water, dog paddling to stay in the middle of the river where she was less likely to be smashed against the rocks.

Despite the tropical climate, Jenna felt her body heat leaching away, and with it, the strength and will to keep going. Fatigue — physical and mental — stole over her, and without realizing it, she stopped paddling. The air in her lungs kept her buoyant, but when she exhaled, her head dipped closer to the surface. She knew she had to keep her face out of the water, but her consciousness was a dim light, unable to penetrate the dark clouds of exhaustion and hypothermia, fading with each passing second.

Fading…

Suddenly, she felt very heavy. The current pushed hard against her, but she wasn’t moving. The river, it seemed, had chosen to cast her up on a rocky shoal.

Safe in the knowledge that she probably wouldn’t drown, she was content to simply lay there, the tepid water continued to leach away her body heat. She needed to get out of the river and find shelter from the rain, but even the contemplation of movement was a daunting task.

Just get out of the river, she told herself. Do that much, and then you can rest.

With a groan, she rolled over and started crawling. The slippery rocks shifted beneath her, dropping her to the bottom, bruising her knees and scraping her palms. She endured the river’s final attack and dragged herself onto the shore.

Now get up. Find some shelter.

She shook her head. No. Rest now. That was the deal.

Her internal retort was half-hearted. She knew that she had to keep moving. Just a few more seconds…

Something rustled in the woods beyond where she lay. She turned toward the sound, just as a man stepped into the open.

“No,” she groaned, but her plea was as futile as everything else she had tried.

She didn’t recognize the man, but there was no mistaking the pistol in his hand or his intent when he aimed it at her heart. He did not fire, however. Instead, he held something close to his mouth — a cell phone or walkie-talkie — and spoke. “This is Trace. I found her.”

There was a brief pause, and then a disembodied voice — Cort’s voice — issued from the handset. “You know what to do.”

53

Trace’s expression reminded Jenna of how Zack had regarded her in the Everglades, just before—

I stabbed him in the eye.

— he tried to kill her. There was no grin of triumph, no exultation of sadistic bloodlust. Just a grim mask of resolve to perform an unpleasant task for the greater good, like cleaning up a toxic waste spill or putting out a brushfire.

You are dangerous.

He brought his gun up with a determined brusqueness. She could almost read his thoughts: Make it quick. Don’t let her distract you. She’ll kill you if she gets the chance.

Jenna doubted very much that she was physically capable of killing him. Just trying to speak left her on the verge of collapse. “How…did you find me?”

No real mystery there. The drainage system was probably a matter of public record. One phone call, and Cort would have known where she would end up. After that, it would have been a simple matter to intercept her on the river. She did not need an explanation. She just needed to make him realize that if he pulled the trigger, he would be killing a real human being. Trace showed no indication that he had even heard her.

You have to live.

How?

Flight? Impossible. She wasn’t sure she could muster the strength to stand, much less make a dash for the tree line, and even if she could manage that, Trace was so close, she wouldn’t get two steps.

Fight?

With what?

She closed her right hand over a smooth river stone the size of her fist. She could throw it. Even if she didn’t put him out of commission, it might buy her a second or two to run.

And then what?

Her inner voice had no advice to give, but to her surprise, Noah’s advice came to her. Your gut reaction to a threat will be to either run away, as fast as you can, or to blow through it head on… But a lot of times, those are the worst choices you could make. You might make a bad situation even worse, or you might miss out on an opportunity.

Opportunity?

She had just seconds to live, and she had already tried and failed to engage Trace. No doubt he had been skilled in the same arts of manipulation that Noah had taught her. What did that leave?

“I saw the signal!” she blurted. “The alien transmission. I know what it says.”

Trace’s expression did not change, but he did not fire.

“You guys are wrong if you think it’s from Earth. It’s not. I know who sent it and why. And I’m the only person who can tell you what it says. Kill me, and you’ll never be able to stop what’s coming.”

Trace remained statue still for several more seconds.

This isn’t working. Jenna curled her fist tighter on the rock. She would only get one chance, and even if she managed to connect, he would still get a shot off. I need to turn sideways, make myself less of a target, keep my vital areas protected…

Trace raised the radio unit once more. “This is Trace. I think you should hear what the girl has to say.”

54

“Get up,” Trace snarled, giving himself plenty of room in case she tried anything. Not that she had any intention of doing so. After Trace had reported her words to Cort, he had been advised to bring her back to the observatory, and that meant Cort was willing to hear what she had to say.

Opportunity.

She got to hands and knees, but when she tried to stand up, a wave of vertigo forced her back down. “I don’t think I can,” she said.

“You’d better. The only way you’re getting out of here alive is on your feet.”

She didn’t think he was exaggerating. Grinding her teeth, she managed to stand. Once again, the world started spinning, so she staggered toward the woods. Ignoring Trace’s shouts, she threw her arms around the nearest tree and hugged it until the sensation passed.

She made her way from tree to tree, following a path that led up to a rural road, where another agent waited at a parked car. Trace directed Jenna to sit in the back then slid in beside her.

Ignoring the gun barrel pressed up under her ribs, Jenna closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift. Life slowly seeped back into her chilled muscles, but she knew that her continued survival would now depend more on her mental abilities than a swift physical recovery. She would have to convince Cort that she was worth more to him alive than dead.

During their first encounter, the advantage had been his, but now she was in possession of a secret that could change the world. The trick would be convincing Cort that she was telling the truth.

Does he need to know the truth?

The question hit her like an epiphany. Cort was not some potential ally she needed to win over. He was her enemy. He wanted to kill her.

“They will fear you,” the teacher had said, “not because of what you are, but because your very existence will force them to admit what they really are. Humanity has been judged and found wanting, and you are the proof. They will fear you. They will try to kill you.”

Cort had said almost exactly the same thing. They’ll find you! They will kill you!

Almost as an afterthought, the teacher had added. “They cannot be trusted.”

Jenna remembered the teacher’s words vividly, even though she knew now that this was an implanted memory. Not a false memory. It was as real as anything she had experienced. Stranger still, she could feel the rightness of the words. They were a part of her, the only possible explanation for who she was, and why she had always been different than everyone else. She could no more question the validity of these feelings than she could doubt her love of chocolate or her dislike for country music. It was simply who she was. More importantly, it defined what she had to do.

Soter had been more right than he knew when he had spoken of her destiny.

You have work to do.

You have to live.

The car’s abrupt halt roused her from the state of half-sleep, and she opened her eyes to see the familiar road leading up to the observatory. A police car partially blocked the lane, but the officer waved them on and Jenna saw no more evidence of law enforcement. There was no trace of the tourists or civilian personnel. In the brief time since her failed escape, Cort had taken over the observatory and shut it down.

The car continued up the now desolate road and parked in front of the transmitter building. Jenna remained still, staring out the window, until Trace told her to get out. Jenna complied, moving robotically, careful not to do anything to provoke him. The short car ride had restored some of her vital energy, but she was in no shape to fight or run.

As Trace ushered her into the transmitter building, Jenna saw the physical evidence of the battle that had been waged to take the building — gouges in the walls, broken windows, bloodstains — but the bodies had been removed. A miasma of smoke hung in the air but the fire in the electrical room had been put out. The building seemed to be deserted. Jenna saw no one — alive or dead — until she reached the control room.

She took in the scene in gulps of recognition. Mercy was there, alive and apparently unhurt, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. Soter was there too, looking a little rattled, but otherwise intact. A single gunman stood guard over them.

Next, Jenna saw Cort, still wearing the same tropical shirt, but his trousers had been replaced by baggy sweatpants. He stood with the aid of crutches. His scowl deepened when he saw her. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Until that moment, Jenna had not considered what she must look like. Bruised and battered, still soaking wet, and barely able to stand — if she looked half as wrecked as she felt, then Cort’s remark was probably justified. Still, his words raised a spark of defiance. “Sorry about your leg, Cort. I should have aimed a little higher.”

Her taunt did not evoke the rage she expected. Cort, like all the other killers that had been sent after her, seemed to have mastered the trick of depersonalizing the grim business of sanctioned murder. Instead of retorting with a threat, Cort simply regarded her for a moment then turned to the other person in the room.

Noah Flood came forward, almost at a run, and swept Jenna into his arms.

Jenna felt her sense of reality crumble. She stood there, unable to move, feeling his familiar strength, breathing in his scent, and she felt as if she were once more in the underground river, being carried along by a current too powerful to resist, toward an unknowable fate. She wanted nothing more than to believe that this was real, that Noah was here to rescue her and take her away to safety, but she couldn’t endure the roller coaster of emotions anymore.

“Normally, I’d get all teary-eyed at this little Hallmark moment,” Cort remarked, “But then I remember how many good men you’ve killed today, and I just want to put a bullet through your brain.”

Noah jumped to her defense. “You know that wasn’t her fault.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass whose fault it is. She’s dangerous, and you know it.”

Jenna raised her hands, placed her palms flat against Noah’s chest, and pushed him away. A pained look creased his face, and he let out a soft grunt. It wasn’t the hurt of rejection but real, physical pain. Cray’s bullet had not killed him, but it hadn’t simply bounced off either. She forced down the upwelling of concern and addressed Cort. “You’re right. I’m dangerous, and so are all the others. You have no idea what you’re facing.”

“That’s why you’re still alive, kid. You’re gonna explain it to me.”

“And what do I get in return?”

Cort flashed a mirthless and insincere smile. “Anything you want. I’ll write you a blank check.”

“What you will do,” Noah interjected, “is guarantee her safety. And if I have even a moment of doubt about whether you’ll keep that promise—”

“Stay out of this,” Cort leveled his venomous gaze at Noah. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one lifetime. But you know, you’re right. She was just defending herself. You’re the one who’s really to blame for all of this. We let you get away with it fifteen years ago, because we thought you could handle it. I guess we know better now, don’t we?”

“You’re wrong about her.”

“She’s dangerous,” Cort insisted. “She’ll turn on you the first chance she gets, and then we’ll all be screwed.”

He turned to Jenna. “Here’s what’s going to happen, little girl. You are going to start talking. If I like what I hear, you get to keep breathing. You’ll be taken to a secure facility — I won’t tell you where — and that’s where you’ll spend the rest of your life. How long that might be will depend on how good your information is. That’s as close to a guarantee as you’re going to get.”

“Everything is going to be all right.” Jenna realized that Noah was speaking to her. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you, but now I am. We’ll get through it together, okay?”

Cort let out a low growl of displeasure.

“Okay?” Noah asked. “You trust me?”

Jenna didn’t know how to answer. Was this another trick? Were Cort and Noah working together, playing some kind of good-cop/bad-cop game? She couldn’t tell. She would never be able to tell. These two men were as skillful at deception as they were at violence.

Listen to your gut, but make up your own damn mind.

Her gut told her that she had no choice but to trust him.

You have to live.

Yes. I think I do.

She held his gaze. “Aren’t you worried about what I might do?”

“Should I be?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who said I was a ticking time-bomb.”

“That’s not what I said…” He inclined his head, ceding the point. “But I do know a thing or two about defusing time-bombs.” He managed a wan smile. “I said that to get you away from Soter, but I don’t believe it. Nobody is born evil. The universe doesn’t work that way. Those others — the clones — might have your DNA, but they aren’t you. Soter raised them to be what they are. I raised you.”

“Nurture wins over nature?”

“Exactly. I’d like to think I raised you pretty well.”

She nodded. “I trust you.”

“Tell him what you know.”

Jenna faced Cort and took a deep breath. “For starters, you’re wrong about what’s going on here. This isn’t some Cold War Soviet disinformation campaign, and what’s happening right now has nothing to do with the Russians.”

“So, what then?” Cort asked. “Aliens?”

Jenna nodded, and with more certainty than she felt, continued. “The messages Dr. Soter received came from an extraterrestrial intelligence that wants to take over the Earth. They think that we’re a disease, and that if they don’t step in, we’ll make the planet unlivable. They want the Earth for themselves, but before they can take over, they need to get rid of us, and what better way to do it than to have us destroy ourselves. The things that have been happening — what you told me the others like me are doing — that’s just the first step.”

“You were here for what, half an hour?” Cort’s demeanor remained skeptical, but his question was sincere, and Jenna wondered if the Agency he worked for had not already secretly reached the same conclusion. “How do you know all this?”

“The second transmission received by Dr. Soter contained an entire human genome, which he used to create…us. What you call ‘clones.’” Jenna paused. She would have to choose her words carefully now to avoid raising questions she wasn’t willing to answer. “Our DNA includes instructions from the aliens, and the message itself contains the trigger to bring our memories of those instructions to the surface.”

She turned to Noah. “Remember what you said? ‘It’s like a switch gets thrown.’ Something hardwired into our DNA. You were right on both counts.

“Soter hoped that the DNA transmission contained instructions for creating a human ambassador — someone who could communicate with the aliens. He thought that we would be able to read the part of the message that he could never decipher. When it didn’t work, when the clones read the message and…changed…he thought it was some error in his gene sequencing. Back to the drawing board. But it wasn’t an error. The message activated those buried memories. It told them what they were supposed to do: start World War III.”

She paused, letting it sink in, and was surprised by how much she cared about Noah’s reaction. Not only had she just confirmed his original worst case scenario about the clones, she had also admitted to reading the message, activating the alien memories coded in her DNA. If he had any doubt about whether she was damaged goods, she had just removed it. Yet, if Noah felt that way, he gave no indication.

It doesn’t matter what he thinks, cautioned an inner voice. Her own voice, but also the voice of the teacher. They will fear you. They will try to kill you.

“So?” Cort asked. “Soter’s science projects blow a gasket and try to destroy the world. You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know.”

“Aren’t you listening? These aren’t random actions. It’s the prelude to an invasion.”

Cort stared hard at her. “Let’s say I believe you. You’re one of them. Why should I trust you?”

“Because I’m one of them,” Jenna said, speaking slowly as if explaining a difficult concept to an impatient child. “I know what they’re doing. I know how they think. And…” She took a deep breath. “I know what’s going to happen next. If you want to stop them, you need my help.”

Noah nodded to Cort as if to say: See? Told you, but Cort just shook his head. “Sorry kid, but if that’s all you’ve got, you’re not worth the bother.”

He nodded to Trace.

“Cort!” Noah’s protest had a menacing air to it. “That wasn’t the deal.”

“There is no deal,” Cort said, shaking his head. “There never was, and you know it. This isn’t even my decision to make. There’s no other way.”

“There’s always another way.”

“Not this time.” Cort’s pronouncement had the finality of a guillotine, but then he added. “Look, I get that you think of her as your daughter—”

“She is my daughter,” Noah replied in a quiet voice.

He moved so quickly that even Jenna was startled. In the blink of an eye, he was behind Cort, gun drawn and pressed up under Cort’s jaw. Cort dropped his crutches in surprise, letting them clatter loudly on the floor.

Trace and the other two gunmen brought their weapons up, aiming in Noah’s direction. Jenna did not doubt that they were expert marksmen, capable of hitting what little of Noah’s form was visible behind his human shield, but doing so would almost certainly result in Cort’s death. She wondered if that mattered to them. Would they be willing to sacrifice their leader to make sure Jenna was dead?

As if reading her thoughts, Trace shifted his aim to her. “I’ll kill her.”

“Don’t do it,” Noah warned, moving his gun to cover Trace.

More shouted threats sizzled between the armed men, all of them talking but no one hearing. Somebody was going to pull a trigger, and once that happened, everyone in the room would probably die.

Jenna could feel the situation reaching a boiling point. She had to do something to stop the room from exploding into a storm of violence, but what difference could she make, unarmed, exhausted and helpless?

You have to live. They will fear you.

I have to make them fear me, she thought, and she realized she wasn’t as helpless as she believed.

55

“Stop!”

Jenna’s shout did not merely cut through the tension; time itself seemed to freeze. Then, one by one, guns lowered. The men fought against the command, with shaking muscles and disbelieving expressions. Their compliance was not voluntary. Jenna was as surprised as everyone else. Was this some newly discovered, genetically programmed ability, or an extension of the techniques Noah had taught her? Regardless of the explanation, she knew the effect would not last. She could already sense the window of opportunity sliding shut.

“Listen to me, all of you. Don’t you get it? If we don’t start working together, we’ll all be screwed.”

What are you doing?

She ignored the voice — the teacher’s voice, her voice. “The world is about to come apart. I can stop it, but I can’t do it alone.”

Stop it? Why?

Cort was the first to shrug off the shout-induced paralysis. “And just how are you going to do that?”

You can’t tell them.

A lump of shame rose into her throat. Was she really going to do this? Betray everything she believed in just to save her own skin?

No! The rebuttal was so forceful, she thought for a moment that she had spoken it aloud. These aren’t my beliefs. Just something planted in my head by someone who doesn’t give a damn about me or anyone that I love.

They don’t love you, insisted the voice. They fear you. They will kill you.

No! She had to grind her teeth together to keep from shouting it. It’s not true.

And it wasn’t. What had Noah just said?

She is my daughter.

Despite everything he knew about her — things she probably didn’t even know herself — he meant it.

That was real. That was the truth.

And he is my father, Jenna thought. Despite everything she knew about him — the lies he had told, the people he had killed — the realization filled her with a joy that was even more powerful than the guilt of her implanted memories.

She unclenched her jaw. “Everything that’s been happening is just the set-up. There’s something even worse coming.”

Cort nodded impatiently. “You’ve already said that.”

“I know, but something has to happen first.”

They will kill you. Then they will destroy everything. Humanity is the cancer that must be eliminated, or everything will be destroyed. You must not interfere.

“The last part of the transmission, the part that contains the trigger, also has instructions. Before the final phase can begin, someone has to send a message back. It’s a signal that the final attack is about to start. Maybe it’s to let them know so they can send their invasion forces.” The last part was conjecture, but it made sense.

“How do you know that hasn’t already happened?”

“There’s a time-table for it.” She reached for the memory but it wasn’t there anymore. Suddenly, she felt faint and staggered to a nearby desk for support. “Damn.”

“Jenna?” Noah asked, then he returned his attention to Cort. “Tell your men to stand down, damn it. Guns on the ground.”

Cort glowered but nodded to Trace and the others. Only when the guns were put away did Noah step away from Cort. “Jenna, what’s wrong?”

“It’s gone,” she said, suddenly feeling helpless again. “Access denied.”

“A fail-safe,” Soter murmured, breaking his long silence. His voice sounded hollow, defeated. Jenna’s explanation had stripped away his illusions and revealed his duplicity in what looked very much like a bid by an alien intelligence to exterminate humankind. “A defense mechanism in the genetic memory to prevent you from turning against the programming.”

Jenna had to fight to catch her breath. What if there were other fail-safe mechanisms? Would all her memories slip away, leaving her a gibbering idiot, or worse, a brain-dead vegetable? Was she going to drop dead of a brain aneurism? “I can’t remember when. I just remember that it’s happening soon. Today, I think.”

“Today?” Cort scoffed. “That’s convenient.”

“It makes sense,” Noah countered. “It explains the escalation. You know it’s true. That’s why the agency panicked and authorized the sanction against us.”

Cort let that go without comment. “Well if you can’t remember anything about this signal, I don’t see how you’re going to be able to help stop it.”

“Wait. The message is in the transmission. We still have that.”

Soter shook his head. “But we still can’t decipher it.”

“I can.” She looked to Cort, asking for permission, but also asking for his trust.

Cort frowned, and for a moment, Jenna thought he was going to further ridicule her, but then he nodded. “Do it.”

The atmosphere in the room shifted. As Jenna took a seat in front of the computer, the others gathered behind her. Soter was poised over her shoulder. Mercy stood beside him, and Noah was beside her, so close that the events of the last two days seemed like a bad dream. Cort’s presence ruined the illusion, but he too seemed eager to see what Jenna would reveal.

The computer monitor still showed the final sequence of the message. It no longer confounded Jenna’s perceptions, but neither did its meaning become instantly apparent. “It’s encrypted,” she said. “The code is fairly simple. Each of these strings are individual numbers, like in the Wow! Signal, but they’ve been modified with a changing mathematical value.”

She didn’t know if she was explaining it correctly. Code-breaking was not a skill that Noah had taught her. Nevertheless, she faintly recalled the structure of the code. “It’s like those puzzles where you substitute a number for a letter, but the key changes with each number.”

“How does it change?” Soter asked, his earlier dejection replaced by an almost childlike enthusiasm. “What’s the progression?”

Jenna searched her memory. The answer was still there, she could feel it. “It keeps increasing,” she said slowly, as if stalling for time. “But always at a constant rate.”

“A mathematical progression? Logarithmic? Prime numbers?” Soter’s tone was becoming strident. “Think girl. What’s the pattern?”

Something familiar. A face remembered, a name forgotten. “Spiral?”

“Like the Golden Ratio?”

Jenna’s recall of that subject was picture perfect. The Golden Ratio — approximately 1.618, also called phi—was one of those remarkable examples of mathematical perfection in nature. She had learned about it in both math and art classes. It described the perfect spiral in conch shells and pine cones, and had been employed in both art and architecture for thousands of years. It was also, Jenna recalled, the exact ratio found in the Fibonacci sequence where each number was the sum of the two preceding numbers: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8 and so forth.

“That’s it! It uses the Fibonacci sequence. The first value is unchanged. The second and third increase by one, then two, and so on.”

Soter laid a hand on her shoulder. “May I?”

Jenna vacated the seat, and the older man took her place. He opened a new program and began typing, his fingers flying across the keys as if inspired. It took him just a few minutes to write a translation algorithm, after which he cut and pasted in the binary sequence.

Jenna held her breath as the start of a now all-too familiar phrase appeared.

This is th…

The rest was a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers, but Jenna knew that she had been right about the key to the cipher. “It resets to zero after ten characters.”

Soter nodded. “That makes sense. If the progression continued to follow the Fibonacci sequence, it would run to more than twelve places.” He made a quick adjustment, and then he ran the program again.

“‘This is the way the world ends,’” Noah read aloud. “‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’ That’s from ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot.”

Jenna flashed him a smile. Noah, it seemed, could still surprise her.

Cort harrumphed. “I’m supposed to believe that these aliens of yours are English lit majors?”

Soter shrugged. “I didn’t just make this up. It’s been clear from the start that the intelligence behind this understood our capabilities. They would certainly be familiar with our works of art.”

“I think the poem is part of the trigger,” Jenna added. “Like a hypnotist might use.”

Cort rolled his eyes, but said nothing more.

The rest of the message was mostly numbers, but Jenna felt certain that Soter’s program had correctly unlocked it. “Those are coordinates.” She recalled the emergency letter Noah had left for her. “Somewhere in the Southwest. New Mexico or Arizona.”

Soter recognized the rest of it. “I think this sequence is a Julian date. And I’d recognize these numbers anywhere. That’s the location of the Chi Sagittarii stellar group, where the Wow! Signal originated and this—1420—is the original frequency, the hydrogen line.”

He turned his chair to face Cort. “The VLA radio telescope is in Socorro, New Mexico.”

As she read it, Jenna felt her memory of the message stirring, but the voice remained silent. “That’s where we have to go. Someone — one of the clones — is going to send a signal into space. To those coordinates.”

Cort nodded slowly. “You said there’s a date?”

“A date and time,” Soter replied. He seemed suddenly ill-at-ease.

“When?”

He swallowed. “Midnight tonight.”

“Well that’s freakin’ wonderful,” Cort grumbled.

Something in Soter’s manner set alarm bells ringing in Jenna’s head. “You already knew this was going to happen today.”

Soter refused to meet her gaze. “For years, there was talk among the children of something important related to this date.”

“You knew,” Jenna repeated. There was no accusation in her tone. “That’s the real reason you sent Cray to get me, isn’t it? The deadline had arrived and you still didn’t know what the message meant.”

His silence was answer enough.

“So,” Cort said after a pause. “At midnight, something is going to happen at this place in New Mexico. We’ll get somebody there and shut the place down.”

Soter shook his head. “Julian dates start at noon Greenwich Mean Time. The date/time indicated in the message is midnight GMT. Eight hours from now.”

“I need to be there,” Jenna said.

“That’s not going to happen,” Cort declared, making a cutting gesture with his hand. “The only way you’re leaving here is in my custody.”

“Like hell,” Noah growled, raising the pistol again. The other agents tensed but did not go for their grounded weapons.

Cort waved them off but kept his attention on Noah. “If you try to leave any other way, you will be hunted down. Even you aren’t that good.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we.” Noah turned to the others. “Jenna, Mercy, we’re going.”

Soter stepped forward. “Take me. I have a plane waiting on the tarmac at the Arecibo Airport. It could get us to New Mexico with time to spare.”

Noah stared back, his face an unreadable mask. “You heard what the man said. They’re going to be hunting us. You sure you want to take that chance?”

The mathematician nodded soberly.

“The more the merrier,” Noah muttered. “Mercy, be a dear and collect those guns. And while I’m thinking about it, let’s have your phones. If you’re going to be hunting us, it only seems fair to give us a head start.”

Cort signaled for his men to comply, this time without threats or taunts. Jenna understood that they were past that stage now. Noah was not going to change his mind, and Cort was already thinking ahead to what he would do next. Jenna realized with sick certainty that the running and fighting was not over, not by a long shot, but now there was a lot more at stake than just her own survival.

She moved closer to Noah. “There’s no way we can make it to New Mexico without Cort’s help.”

Noah glanced in Cort’s direction before answering in a low whisper that only she could hear. “We aren’t going to New Mexico, but Cort doesn’t need to know that. I know a guy that can get us to Cuba. They won’t be able to touch us there.”

“No!” The forcefulness of her denial surprised even her. She had spoken so loudly that everyone in the room looked at her. “I have to go to New Mexico.”

Noah frowned in irritation. “Jenna, you’ve done enough. Cort can take care of this with a phone call. You don’t need to be there.”

“But I do. I have to be there,” she repeated. “I’m the only one who can stop it.”

“Why?”

She had no answer. There was no rational explanation for the compulsion she felt, but if she revealed her uncertainty, Noah would never agree.

“There’s more to the instructions,” she lied, except part of her realized it wasn’t a lie. While the coded message did contain some specific instructions, its primary function was to activate the implanted memories. Although that door had closed, Jenna knew that there was a lot more that had not been revealed to her. “I think I have to go there to unlock the rest.”

“You think?”

She gripped his arm. “Noah, you have to trust me. I’m the only one who can stop it.”

Noah’s frown deepened. “I believe you, but I’m not the one you have to convince.”

Jenna turned to Cort. “If you get me to New Mexico, then I’m all yours. You can ship me off to one of your secret prisons, throw me in a hole and make me disappear forever.”

Noah stepped between her and Cort. “Jenna, don’t be stupid.”

Jenna pointed at the computer screen where the message was still displayed. “You see that? How the message ends?”

Nobody had commented on the last line of the transmission, the final marching orders for each clone. Four simple but ominous words in plain English.

Wipe the slate clean.

“That’s what’s going to happen if I don’t get to New Mexico. What happens after that doesn’t matter, because if I don’t get there, there isn’t going to be an ‘after.’”

Noah stared at her for a long time, his expression twisted with emotions that he was no longer able to suppress.

It was Cort that finally broke the silence. “So I’m supposed to take you at your word? What, are you gonna pinky-swear to give yourself up when it’s all done?”

Before Jenna could answer, Mercy spoke. “I’ll stay. You can keep me as collateral.”

“Mercy, no.” Jenna heard Noah echoing her own denial, but Mercy just shook her head.

“It’s okay, Jenna. I believe you. I know that you have to do this. It sickens me that we were used like this.” Jenna knew what Mercy meant by ‘we.’ She wasn’t just Jenna’s sister or mother. All of the clones had been created using her DNA. “And this way, we’ll still be together when it’s all over.”

Cort just laughed. “What the hell? It’s a deal.”